Brief sketches for Ancillary Tasks

Here are a few brief sketches which I have scanned in for my ancillary taskes. I have drawn a very brief outline of the type of magazing cover anf film poster I wish to create. The magazine cover is very much inspired by 'Empire' magazine, after researching into their layouts and designs I have realised I like the simple layout which Empire magazine tends to have. I intend to stick to a three colour scheme on my magazine cover such as; red white and black- I feel these colours look professional and go well with each other. I intend to take a studio shot of my main subject as after looking at several types of different covers this seems to be the main type of picture used aswell- it also looks very professional! I like Empires main title so I will replicate this using adobe photoshop and will take inspiration from their layout- such as having all the articles on one side of the magazine, neatly alined. I will make sure the font is easy to read on the front cover as this is something I feel lost me marks in my work last year aswell as sticking to one or two of the same style fonts which are very easy to read to give the magazine cover a neat finish.

For my film poster I also want to keep it simple as I feel this look is far more effective. I intend to have a black background with white or ref font. Preferably white as red could be too dark and therefore hard for the audience to see. After looking at several different horror film posters I have favoured the blair witch product poster.  I really like how they have placed the main subject at the bottom, in black and white with creepy lightings on their face. For my picture I intend to take a extreme close up from a upwards angle of my models face to create a similar look- I may have my model close my eyes to portray the peaceful feel which our teaser trailer connotes.  I also really like the darkness to it which is why I intend to have my background black. I really like the composition of the title and the billing box which are positioned at the bottom of the poster- this is something I intend to incorperate into my own horror film poster. I intend to keep the top half of my poster quite empty with perhaps a slogan such as "What would you do if the past came back to haunt you...?" a line taken from our teaser trailer. Also; after looking at different styles of film posters some have ratings on the top which I feel looks good- this is something I would want to try on my own poster. For the billing box; I intend to keep it relatively small using the signiture long and thin font, I feel if it looks too big it will distract the audiences gaze from the main picture which will be relatively close to the billing box.

Distribution

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Preliminary tasks, my original photographs

Original pictures from the preliminary tasks

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My finished magazine front cover

How our trailer uses forms and conventions of real horror teaser trailers

To make a film successful, the directors and producers have to follow typical film forms and conventions to ensure the product will become successful to enable a high revenue stream. Throughout the film they have to consider all the aspects and the conventions such as: Who is their target audience? What do they have to do to meet the target audience’s specific needs? As well as other aspects including the genre of the film and what they have to do to live up to the expectations. For example: Horror films are becoming more and more popular to enable guarantee the film will be successful they have to research into what makes a successful film: take this into account and better it to gain recognition. Other aspects can include the representations they are trying to achieve E.G. Do they want a ‘final’ girl? Or will they represent a stereotypical view of gender? How will they address the narrative? This has to relate to the target audience and keeping them interested. Production values of films can help to make them more successful. For example, if say a loved actor such as Tom Cruise starred in a new film this will help it gain recognition due to him being so famous and fans of this actor will go and see the film to support the actor creating a revenue stream for the film resulting in it being a success! Trailers must stick to these conventions to enable them to gain recognition and fans- addressing their target audiences. I feel we have stuck to these conventions throughout our trailer; we have addressed our target audience well. An example of this could be: for our audience research we found out people were put off from seeing horror films because they simply did not like the sight of blood. We took this into account when filming and decided to keep it on the tame side showing no blood but still connoting the influence of death and the scary events leading up to it. Due to our target audience being fairly young we did not want to make it too gory and scary. A trailer must keep the target audience interested and wanting to find out more by having a good cliff hanger at the end: I feel our media product did this extremely well the ending of the trailer consisted of the main protagonist having a shock and then it quickly cuts to black; we then hear panting followed by crying all in dark; due to the audience not being able to see the events I feel we created interest. Music has a big impact on trailers and this is one of the main conventions: music builds tension as well as creating the emotions wanting to be connoted which leaves the audience wanting to see more resulting in them going to see the film. I feel we have done this successfully in our teaser trailer: we have selected slow sinister sounding music which connotes the peaceful image we wanted to achieve, it gets faster as the footage becomes faster which creates a lot of tension. The top half of the pictures are stills I have found from existing horror films and the bottom half is of stills I have 'print screened' from the YouTube version of out horror teaser trailer

1. Close ups of body parts: Close up of body parts are commonly used in horror movies to help create a distorted view on reality which is a horror's purpose. I really like the distorted looks to these pictures it is as if someone or something is watching over them which creates suspense. Close ups are often used in trailers and are a good example of the conventions used within them as they help the audience relate with the main protagonist as well as giving the trailer an edgy, distorted feel. Strange shots like ones of body parts are a common feature in the genre horror as they create recognition from the audience and they can relate to the main protagonist’s more. Close ups of eyes are often shown within a horror trailer as this is the best way to show a characters emotions without giving the plot away. In our trailer we shot a close up of a hand and tops of legs, hands are something which are often picked out in horror trailers and films as the action of the protagonists are usually started by their hands. An example of this type of shot can be made from our group’s trailer: It is of the female protagonist in the first half of the trailer, it is of her hand and legs I really like this shot as it creates mystery and suspense as well as being graceful due to a white dress floating and the soft lighting. Soft lighting is not often a horror trailer convention- it is usual harsh, dark tones perhaps with a red tint to connote danger and blood. The picture from the existing horror film is very similar, it is of the main protagonist’s feet and there is a lot more gore- a common horror and trailer convention as it tends to scare the majority of people and create a lot of suspense. We decided not to use this obvious trailer convention in ours as we wanted our trailer to much more peaceful and graceful, and we felt by giving too much of the plot away it would ruin it.

2. Close ups: close ups are a common horror convention. It helps us relate with the character and notice their focus as well as sympathising with their emotions. We have used a few effective close ups in our trailer, we became very fond of this trailer convention. Close ups can express an unsettling feeling for the audience as we cannot see the surroundings in which the characters are. An example of this work can be found in our trailer: The main female protagonist is presented in a close up showing her face and shoulders, I really like this still from our teaser trailer, due to her looking off screen it creates audience interest to what she is looking at and creates a great deal of suspense due to the unexpected events about to happen. The still from the already produced horror is taken from the house of wax. We can see from the picture that the female protagonist is crying- a common horror convention and a component which is also used in trailers to help create a great deal of sympathy and for the audience to get on 'her side', the close up of her is very effective her distraught emotions shown on her face help us sympathise with her.

3. Extreme close ups: ECU is a common horror convention used in films and trailers. Extreme close ups also create distortion and leave the audience feeling uneasy due to the lack of knowing what position the characters are in as we cannot see their surroundings so the audience then feel panicky due to the unknown events which could then happen. In these two shots you can see this convention at work: The audience can really focus on her face and gaze. This shot also has an upwards angle which makes the shot appear to be unusual and can help us relate to the character more. It can also connote someone watching her as it can look like a gaze. The ECU from the existing trailer is much more close up- of an eye- this is also something which appears to be very popular in horror films, it creates distortion and helps the audience to relate to the main protagonists as eyes are very personal. Extreme close ups are an excellent example of some of the conventions used in a trailer as it creates audience identification with the main protagonists.

4. Mirrors: mirrors are a common component used within horror films they can connote split personalities as well as them being shattered it can represent split personalities. It also varies the way we relate with the character and it looks as if a character is watching them from behind as well as the audience being able to see the character how they see themselves. Mirrors can be very disturbing for the audience and it can make them feel rather unsettled; this work is predominant within our trailer: The over the shoulder shot is an effective shot for also making it look as if a character is over them, building tension and suspense to what is going to occur next. I feel mirrors are really effective, reflections whether they are in mirrors or in water can be portrayed as very creepy. The still from our trailer is much more peaceful whereas the still taken from the horror film Mirrors is more typical horror- the main male protagonist has chucked a rock at the mirror and it has cracked. Broken objects are something which is commonly used in horrors due to their destructive nature. Braking objects or violence is a common horror trailer convention, it builds the audience up for extreme suspense as well as making them feel frightened the main objective for horror trailers and films.

5. Taps and baths are a common feature of horror as they can connote drowning which can be something used in horror trailers and films. You can see this at work within our trailer; I really like this cropped shot as it creates mystery and suspense. Bathrooms are also something which can be seen in horror films as they can be portrayed as being personal and an easy target. The still taken from our horror trailer is a close up of taps, which I feel connote a creepy feel. Whereas the still taken from an existing horror shows a whole bath with a woman inside the bird’s eye view connotes someone is watching her creating suspense. Bathrooms and locations involving water are often a location which occurs in horror films or trailers as a frightening convention, they are seen as scary as they are an accident prone location which can have disastrous outcomes.

 6. Close up of doors: Doors and the opening of handles are often used to create suspense in horror. This can be viewed in our trailer: the main protagonist is opening a door the suspense is strong as an expected thing possibly shocking is going to occur. I think this is an interesting shot as the camera angle is slightly canted- a common horror convention which creates an unrealistic and expresses an unsettling mood rather than trying to be naturalistic. Canted angles give a delusional perspective on reality which is what the trailer or film wants to achieve as they are not connoting reality they are connoting a horror which is far from the ‘norm’.

7. Long shot: long shots are often used in horror films as they show the character as well as the surroundings to help create an accurate perception of the film. In the still from our horror trailer the main female protagonist is facing away from the camera which also creates suspense as we are placed in 'her shoes'. In the existing trailer picture the women is facing towards us, which helps us relate to her. Long shots can be considered to be a good trailer convention it leaves the audience having a good idea of what the film will contain- they will find out the basic surroundings as well as seeing what the main protagonists look like. One of the main trailer conventions is for the audience to have a clear-ish perspective of the film and for them to gain an opinion- this could help them do so.

8. Over the shoulder shots and the different types of depth of frame: OTS are a common horror convention and trailer convention. Their purpose is to give the illusion of a figure or monster standing behind them which can create tension as well as the audience being to relate with them as well as the object behind them- we can see what they see. Both of the stills have mirrors in which give a more varied look and more room for the audience to gain their perspectives. The depth of frame also helps to build suspense but also shows the audience the amount of the person they are focusing on- being the depth.

 9. Underwater: underwater horrors have become a more common horror setting throughout the media. The setting can connote peaceful and gracefulness as well as distortion and suspense. The still from my groups horror is a close up of the female protagonists eyes, I really like this shot even though it is a very peaceful and graceful shot it creates suspense due to the unknown mystery and events to come. The shot from an existing horror is a beautiful graceful female actor who is floating underwater- we can presume she is dead. One of the trailer conventions is to target as wider audience as possible- by having a more ‘peaceful’ type of horror it can relate to a wider audience as studies have proven people are most put off by horror’s due to the amount of gore.

How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?

One of the roles of a Distributors job is to make sure the media product becomes well known. They have to produce a compelling marketing campaign for a media product which covers advertising, publicity and promotion: All three of these aspects must be covered in enough depth to enable the media product to be successful and to have a good revenue stream. The advertising of a film includes the theatrical and teaser trailer for the product; this is a great way for enticing the target audience with the audiovisual content. A trailer should be gripping and easy to watch from the audience’s perspective; the trailer is the most high valued piece of advertising which comes with the highest price but also has the most effective outcomes, it gains the most awareness as it reveals the most about the media product. The distributor will get to know the target audience very well before producing any advertising campaigns they will consider their demographics and psychographics such as: Do they go on the internet and if so what sites do they go on? What is their favourite channel? They can then use the convenience of media convergence and place their advertisements on websites where they will see it and on Television- trailers have the potential for a very high level of exposure. A poster usually accompanies the trailer to gain visibility from the audience; the job of the film poster is to enable even more awareness of the media product. Posters can be put on the internet as well as mobile internet, they can be put on billboards, on the sides of buses, in shops – the possibilities are endless. Of course, this advertising comes at a price and it becomes the distributor’s job to realise the best places to advertise to maintain high levels of exposure. Alongside advertising, the key to success is also publicity. The distribution company discusses their marketing plan with various media forms such as the radio, television and magazines- it is the distributor’s job to try to get the best levels of exposures for the film. For examples, having a long in depth interview on the radio or on the television to gain awareness would help as well as getting full exposure on the front cover of a magazine. Other components such as interviews with the cast are held to also ensure high levels of exposure- production values can help with this, and test screenings to improve the product even more whilst making the audience feel as if they have had a positive impact on the product. I feel my poster would be suitable for this type of exposure, I have included high ratings at the top of the poster which will make the audience feel as if they should go and see it due to the positive response. Positive word of mouth is also a great way to create hype over a media product- the distributor needs to make sure the consumer feels positively about the film so will therefore tell friends and family how good it is so they will be more likely to go see it which creates more of a revenue stream. This type of publicity can however go wrong easily- if at first the media product has negative views and the word of mouth conveys this the hype will go down from the beginning. A theatrical trailer is one of the main components which help to get the film recognised and for opinions to be set. A theatrical trailer indicates a lot more of the plot compared to a teaser trailer and more often than not shows the orders of the main events in the film. A teaser trailer’s main job is to create anticipation for the film which will come out a few months later or in the next season. Alongside the teaser trailer, film posters are often made for publicity. They are put in places where people can see them e.g. on large billboards along roadsides and in advertising spaces on websites such as Facebook and YouTube.

 

Mine and my groups Horror teaser trailer and my magazine cover and poster are all types of which make up a ‘package’ of promotional advertising. The purposes of my poster and magazine are to help generate a revenue stream from helping to advertise my teaser trailer which is also a form of publicity for the theatrical trailer (If it existed!). The poster and magazine cover are there to accompany the trailer, the poster is supposed to echo and help indicate what the film is going to entail. I feel my poster, inspired by the Blair Witch Project official poster, has done this as the female protagonist is the main focal point and therefore the audience will know she is the lead character. I really like the picture I have chose to use. Even though one of the conventions is for the model in the picture to make eye contact with the audience so they focus more and it can help them relate to the model, I feel my shot of my model with her eyes closed connotes a peaceful feel which is something we wanted to connote within our horror teaser trailer. I liked how, in our trailer, we had two main female protagonists but I feel as the film would be about the protagonist in 2011 I felt it was best to use her. At the end of the trailer is a cliff hanger and I feel by using the female character in the second half it helps to create more interest in her role and lets the audience know that she will be the leading lady. I wanted to keep the poster as simple as I could, as I feel if a poster is too busy it averts the attention from the most important information such as the name of the film, slogan, and when it is coming out. I decided to stick to the three colour scheme like it tends to be on magazine covers. I chose typical horror film related colours; black, red and white. I feel by sticking to a limited amount of colours creates a professional look. I then felt the picture should also link with this so I changed the colour to black and white and placed a grainy filter on top of the pictureNext, I changed the contrast to create a more tonal and interesting look. I came up with the slogan “What would you do if the past came back to haunt you?” I liked this as it is simple and has a ring to it. By having a rhetorical question as a slogan can create interest from the audience as it leaves the audience thinking about it as the question is remained unanswered. I chose a simple, bold font which would be easily read from a distance away as if my products were to be advertised for example, alongside the road, they should be easy to read and bold looking to grab the audience’s attention. I then placed a billing box along the bottom; I tried to keep with the traditional look of the thin, long writing and in the traditional shape. I found this quite challenging as I had trouble downloading the font from an internet site and I found the shape hard to look effective. After researching in depth into the look of magazine posters I have noticed that quite a few of them have a website at the bottom, normally written in a different colour to attract the interest from the audience. I chose to write mine in the same font as the title and write it in red so it stands out from the billing box. The magazine cover is there to spread ‘the word’. Before seeing the film the audience may wish to read up about it and get to know the actors more, so by creating interest with a magazine cover can enable them to do this. I looked on good images at previous magazine covers and ‘Empire’ caught my attention due to the bold choice of title. I based my magazine cover on this as stuck to the same three colour scheme, red white and black. I feel by keeping to this it helps to make the media product look neat and professional. I took a studio shot of the same female protagonist again but this time I had her looking directly into the camera and connoting a ‘seductive’ look to help grab the attention from the audience. As demographically, males tend to take more interest in horror films. Magazine covers tend to have studio shots as it instantly makes the picture look professional. The magazine covers purpose is to help the audience have a clear understanding of what the film is about as well as them warming to the main protagonists because of interviews. I feel my magazine cover does this as I have written on the front about interviews which would be inside if it was a real magazine. I wanted the magazine, like my film poster, to look simple and to have a similar look to the poster so the audience can associate the trailer with the poster and the magazine cover.

How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?

Web 2.0 has transformed the way we see and use the internet due to the creation of user- generated content which means normal people such as students can get their views heard online. These are the media technologies I have used to help me construct, research, plan and evaluate throughout the different stages of my project. For research I have used; Google: to help find out about different teaser trailers and peoples personal views on them as well as finding tutorials which will allow me to be able to do the practical things on programmes such as Photoshop and final cut pro, a programme I have not used much before this project. Facebook has enabled me to do a lot of research by being able to talk to friends online about research; these sites have made it a quicker and more reliable process to get audience research in. All of this online research has enabled me to broadcast my research to a worldwide audience and a much larger ranged audience as well as being able to collect more accurate data due to the larger scale of people asked, compared to just a few class mates. You tube has enabled me to access thousands of trailers to look at and gain inspiration from as well as looking at user comments to find out what they think is effective and not so effective about that particular trailer. You tube has also enabled to be able to embed trailers onto my blogger account to analyse them and do my initial planning research. You tube also enabled us to search for inspiration for music for our teaser trailer. Blogger is what we have used to organise our blogs, it is simple to use and the results are effective. I feel it is a good way to present our work as we can access and work on it where ever we are and it is easy to improve your work by getting feedback from peers and teachers as they can access it easily. We can personalise our blogs within reason which I have found helps me to do work due to it being more aesthetically pleasing. Blogger is a much more convenient way to produce our media work, as media students we are visual as well as demographically having a high interest in new technologies and being on a computer helps us access this. Flickr has enabled me to do my analyse in a more aesthetically pleasing way as well as making my blog look nicer and easy to follow. The text is broken up in chunks called ‘notes’ which not only makes it easier for me to write my analysis due to being able to do it in small chunks but also makes it much more visually pleasing for people to look at it due to the informal feel to it. Whilst making our teaser trailer our group used media technologies such as: Film cameras: I found this challenging at first but as we became more familiar with factors such as placing the cassette in and practising effective looking shots such as extreme close ups and canted angles, it then became much easier to use and we could experiment more with angles and other factors such as focus. This shot the footage for our teaser trailer. SLR camera: We used this when we were shooting to take still images. Being a photography student, I am familiar with the use of this type of camera. I have also used this camera throughout this project to shoot stills for the ancillary tasks: the magazine front cover and the poster- these stills are very high quality which makes my work look more professional. Due to media convergence, it was extremely easy to upload pictures onto the computer and begin to manipulate them easily. Microphone: We used the Mac computer’s microphone to record the voice over for our teaser trailer. We experimented with this to get the tone and volume right. This was an easy process and on the later audience research we found it was an effective outcome for our group’s teaser trailer. I have used a few different font sites to help me use professional looking fonts such as dafont.com and myfonts.com- I downloaded them from the internet and uploaded them onto photo shop. I have used photo shop a fair amount through this project- my ancillary tasks were created on photo shop, I found the use of this programme quite easy as I use it on a daily basis and we learnt the key processes in last year’s media. My ancillary tasks were produced on this programme. Our music consisted of tracks found on one of the group members hard drive- copy right free and also the voice over recorded on the Mac’s.

At first, I never thought I was going to get to grips with the editing programme final cut pro. However, when you familiarise yourself with the key principles such as logging and capturing the footage and the time lines and simple effects such as ‘fade to black’, the editing process became a lot easier. Learning to cut pieces of footage and place them together in an effective way challenging at first but when we all got used to the razor tool, this also became a lot easier. Final cut pro is great for drastic editing. For example; our lighting at the beginning was far too light but following a few simple steps on final cut pro we were able to change the whole look of the footage by adding a few simple filters. We added a grainy filter on the first half of our teaser trailer as it was set in the 1940’s and we wanted this to appear more obvious to the audience we were able to easily create even lighting throughout the whole teaser due to being able to select ‘copy attributes’which enabled us to copy the filters over with the exact same settings. Our group had a great deal of trouble creating inter-titles for our trailer; we became adamant on the inter-titles appearing to be like water but due to the cheap looking filters we were able to access and after the class response we soon realised this was not right for our teaser. We then settled for simple yet effect black inter titles with white writing on- we added filters to this writing to get a glowing effect. Within our trailer, this is a clip of footage in the second half of the main female protagonist when she finds the music box- she opens it- we thought it would look good to have a subtle beam of light coming out of the box to indicate the box being possessed by a spirit. However, after spending a lesson fiddling around with lighting effects and the brightness we decided to leave this effect out as it did not look as effective as we had hoped. We decided to record a voice over after finishing the main bulk of the editing and we had a lot of fun going through all the different voice effects we could select, it was hard to select an appropriate voice at first but once I got used to hearing them it became a lot easier, final cut pro has a very good sound balance. Our group found it challenging to select a place to put the voice over, we did not want it to clash with other audio but we did not want it to stand out too much, we settled for putting it at the end of the trailer, which I feel worked extremely well. It was hard familiarising myself with the two different audio timelines at first but I soon got used to it, also being able to change the volumes of the original film footage came in extremely useful and the creation of the razor tool enabled us to move sound footage and place it in other places.

I feel I have gained a lot of knowledge on different media technologies throughout this project and I feel I will continue to use this programmes such as; Flickr, it is an easy and effect way to do analysis in a visually aesthetically way. I have now created my own blog as I find the aspect of being able to create my own posts and people being able to comment on them as well as being able to comment on their views very interesting. I would like to continue using film cameras as they are much easier to use then I had anticipated before working on this product.

I have thoroughly enjoyed putting my work into a blog, I much prefer this type of work rather than sitting down and writing an essay. My other A2 subjects include photography which has enabled me to present my work well.

Microsoft word and similar programmes can be very unreliable so to have the comfort of blogger always saving unsaved work as a draft is very good. Using a blog is a lot more convenient, I have found it a lot easier to do work- there is no need to have to remember to send your work home or carry a memory stick around- as you can access the internet everywhere. Using a blog is a lot more aesthetically pleasing, we can place our own pictures as well as pictures found online to create a visually pleasing blog by breaking down large chunks of text. Blogger enables us to be able to upload work from other websites such as flickr which I feel is a good way to present our analysis in a visually pleasing way.